(Reuters) - The University of Utah on Wednesday said it is
providing free paternity testing to women who conceived children
at two fertility clinics that employed a lab worker suspected of
artificially inseminating a patient with his own sperm.

Questions arose about practices at the now-defunct clinics
when a woman artificially inseminated at Reproductive Medical
Technologies Inc claimed that genetic testing showed that the
late lab technician, Tom Lippert, rather than her husband, was
the biological father of a daughter born in 1992, university
officials said.

The mother at the center of the supposed sperm swap has not
been identified by the university but told local television
station KUTV in an interview earlier this month that she
discovered the situation through DNA tests that she had
conducted on her family.

A probe by the university into operations at the private
clinic under contract to the school and its own community lab
has unearthed records showing Lippert, who died in 1999, was
considered a problem employee by some but a good worker by
others, said Chris Nelson, a spokesman for the University of
Utah Health Care.

Lippert prepared sperm specimens from 1988 to 1993 at both
facilities, which were separate entities but shared the same
building, overlapped on staff and administrative oversight and
appeared to many patients to be one and the same, Nelson said.

The university has found no evidence so far confirming the
claimed sperm switch but has offered to conduct free paternity
testing for concerned patients, five of whom have contacted the
school and two of whom have asked for genetic analyses.

"There's no easy answer to this one," Nelson said of the
controversy swirling around the state's flagship research
university, known for its advances in reproductive medicine. "It
could be as simple as a labeling error, but the reality is, this
guy is dead and he's the only one who could really know."

The school is seeking any available medical records from the
private clinic, which was shuttered in 1998, and from the
University of Utah Community Laboratory, which closed 10 years
ago.

The university also has gathered a panel of medical experts
to review the data and hired an independent medical ethicist to
oversee any findings or recommendations by the medical team.

"We realize we have to have accountability and transparency,
and we sympathize with the anxiety this may be causing the
family and other patients," Nelson said.

advertisement

NOTE: All comments for this article are moderated.
Your comment will be published pending approval.